Katie and Lilly Keep Close

I know some women have their special, nice way of being mean to one another, but I'm rarely a witness. I always walk in late,

As Charlie Brown laments, with his forehead scribbled, "I never know what's going on".

That's a complaint dating back ---naturally---to childhood.

Katie and Christian and I were in Recieving, unpacking and sorting a new shipment of books. There were five or six booksellers hanging around, hiding out, and a few of the foppish supes, who actually put their feet up when they loiter.

Katie is 24, not quite shoulder-high, compact-healthy. Her light brown hair is short with a plain hair-cut and she's flat-footed. No nonsense, except for non-stop, musical, often hilarious self-narrative. She has light blue eyes which seem ever so slightly crossed at times, and wonderfully expressive. Her face is squarish, maybe heart shaped with her cheekbones.

She's cute as a button in other words. And she likes baking cookies and lasanga and bringing food to work for everyone.

She found a great web-site on crafts. She lives at Hobby Lobby, with my Good Night Nurse. Spends hours and hours there.

She's as wholesome as Marilyn Chambers on the Ivory Snow box.
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Happy-going chatter-box. I sigh at my age and her youth. All we do is unpack and sort books while listening to and complaining about the FM radio playing songs 30 and 40 years old. (Same rotation as always. Hotel California. Stairway To Heaven. Repeat.)

She is a lapsed graduate student (of course! this is a bookstore!). She has only her thesis to finish. She's joked with Christian and me about how she can't rally herself since Novemeber and how her mother is always asking about her progress.

Both Katie and Christian laugh at just about everything. So you learn to also, it seems. It's like they're unveiling a world-view for me. It's an infectuous spirit.

Every off hand observation leads to a chuckle (No, a hee-hee-eeee, more like). I guess we don't make any observations if they're not in some way ironic, self-effacing, even punning. Memories flow, stories are told, all to be entertaining. Katie is the engine.

If you've got nothing funny to say, say nothing at all.
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As I say, there were six or ten booksellers hanging around when one of them, Lilly, suddenly acted surprised to see Katie there.

"Katie, aren't you in school anymore?"

There was a sudden silence. Christian, I noticed, left immediately. I kept beeping the ISBN's with my hand-scanner and putting the single copy books on the appropriate carts, into their hundred sub-categories.

"I thought you were only here for Christmas," Lilly explained.

Katie said she just needed to finish her thesis. But that she hadn't touched it in a month.

"When do you graduate?"

"May. Ha,ha. I'm still telling my mother. May. Hopefully. Yes, May. I will."

"So but you're back here. Say, this is an elite group! How many people does Christian have working for him now??"

"I don't know. John and me. Sometimes James..."

I'm a stranger to the human race but now I could tell this was wrong. This wasn't a quiet, close, private inquiry. Lilly was talking from ten feet away. The silence of her audience made it like a whacky play, with Lilly seeming to be out of control, really bombing as an introvert playing an extrovert.

"How far along are you?"

"My survey is all done." Katie swept some non-existent hair from her eyes, an automatic gesture signaling busy-ness and perhaps fatigue. "Since last Fall, haha! I have about 30 pages. My professor has called me a few times, wondering, " she laughed, weakly. "I don't know what's wrong with me."

"Are you going to stay back here from now on? It is fun back here, isn't it? I wouldn't miss the sales floor, I know that."

Katie had no answer.

We were moving between the seven carts in our nearly perfect choreography, sub-consciously, invisiably signaling one another which way we were going and always knowing the right-of-way. (In four hours there are probably two or three beg-pardons. We're good, we're fast. Each cart has a hundred placards for sub-categories. We're efficient, we get it right and recieve no complaints from the shelvers.)

When I realized Katie might be letting this get to her, I was surprised and sorry. Did she think she was being made a fool of? Or that she should quit the store and go home and finish her thesis? Everyone in the room would agree that it was Lilly who was looking foolish.

Normally Katie will make remarks like, "When I had a real job...". Or, "I'm glad I don't have a real job," (echoing my sentiments exactly).

"Am I prying?" Lilly asked. "I'm just surprised to see you back here."

That prompted a bookseller to say to Lilly, "This is why we don't ask questions like that." I didn't turn around to see who that was, but if I had, I'd have saluted him.

"Huh?" Lilly held a book out in front of her and looked concerned. "Is this one of mine? Will you scan this for me, Katie?"

Katie walked across the long room and hand-scanned it.

"Oh. It is! Thanks, Katie."

She left finally and Christian came back as the door was swinging, almost like he'd been standing out there waiting. "Is the awkwardness over yet?" he asked.

Katie's head jerked up. "Was there awkwardness??" Perhaps this was the moment the pail of water poured on her head. She seemed genuinely surprised. Or she seemed to want us to believe she was surprised.

The next thirty minutes were unhappy. Or I was imagining things. Katie was mute now.

Days when Katie doesn't work are dull because we don't have any entertainment. She isn't there commenting on the books, or calling customers about their special orders and then describing to us, now and again, the surprise and confusion on the other end of the line. When Katie is vexed she is all the more humorous. Some complainers can be very entertaining.

I wanted to say something but I'm a stranger still, and maybe I didn't know what Katie was feeling.

Other booksellers offered up their own stories of procrastination at school. I kept quiet and realized that this group takes care of itself. I can listen and observe. I'm outside and that's good for now. It would have been impertinet to offer consolation, but I was very tempted.

The friendly seeming unfriendliness between some women... I've heard say! But now, maybe because I'm sober, the doors of perception, don't you know.

The ordinary can still be novel to the recovering drunkard.